The Turning Hour
by Shelley Fraser Mickle

List Price: $24.95
Pages: 240
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0913515221
Publisher: River City Press

Shelley Fraser Mickle was born in l944, and grew up in Arkansas and Tennessee. The mother of two grown children and the wife of a pediatric neurosurgeon, she now lives in Florida on a farm with her three horses, two dogs, one cat, and eight cows. Her first novel, The Queen of October, was a l989 New York Times Notable Book; her second novel, Replacing Dad, became a CBS movie and is now frequently shown on the Hallmark Channel, starring Mary McDonnell and teen heartthrob Eric von Detten.

Shelley began reading her humorous essays on National Public Radio in l995, and her collection of some of these was published in 2000, titled The Kids Are Gone; The Dog Is Depressed & Mom's on the Loose. She also writes a weekly newspaper column called "Novel Conversations" which works like a book club. Her web site is www.shelleymickle.com.

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1. I understand that the idea for this book came from a woman you met on the beach. Would you please tell us more about the origins of the story?

In the fall of l995, I was over at the beach near St. Augustine, Florida, which is near where I live. I was with a group of friends, and I was introduced to a woman who later came up to me and said she had read my two novels and felt that she knew me as well as she'd ever known anyone. And furthermore, she felt that I could know her perhaps in ways that no one else could, and that she wanted to give me the gift of a story that she had lived. Over the next hour and a half, she told me a disturbing, but beautiful, story about the fact that her child, as a senior in high school had attempted suicide, and she had discovered that something she had unwittingly done contributed to her child's drastic decision. And yet in the unraveling of the facts, and in this child's remarkable recovery, the family grew in unexpected and valuable ways, such that now they all considered this dark time in their lives to have enriched them immeasurably.

2. THE TURNING HOUR is quite a departure from the humor of your previous book, The Kids Are Gone; The Dog Is Depressed and Mom's on the Loose. What made you tackle such a serious subject like suicide?

Yes, basically I'm regarded at a humorist. And that makes this new novel seem that I must have written it while going through menopause and losing my mind. But the truth is that at first, the idea of turning this story into a novel gave me the willies so bad that I didn't want to get near it with a ten-foot pole-for in writing a novel, you have to go into that emotional territory which the story requires. And I knew that I would have to become that child who had tried to give up life, and I simply did not want to go there. I filed it away, in fact, tried to forget it. Then, over time, a question kept reoccurring to me: for after one commits such a drastic act as attempting suicide, how does one get back-that is-back to an emotionally vibrant life? In other words, one may choose death and be turned back from it physically, but how does one come back alive, spiritually. It was this question that began to drive me to the point that I HAD to begin writing the story. If I could answer my main character's question-- the young girl I named Bergin, her question of "How do I get back?"-- I felt that by looking at her drastic act of giving up life I would, in a sense, be discovering the essence of life-defining its value by looking at it from ground zero, you might say.

3. Was THE TURNING HOUR a difficult book to write in comparison to your previous novels?

This book was a gift, not only in the way that the story came to me, but also in the sense that it felt that someone else was writing it. I became almost like a secretary for someone who was dictating it to me. And whoever it was wanted to get to work at about 4 each morning. I would get up and write, then go to bed at about one o'clock every afternoon for a nap. Then the next morning, as if someone were tapping me on the shoulder, saying, "Come on, let's get to work, I'd wake up at 4 and start all over again. I kept it up for five months, then took a break for a month, then went back at it for another four months. I felt really crazy when someone would call in the afternoon and it was clear I was answering the phone while half asleep. Especially those telemarketers. I don't know what I said to any of them; but it became clear I dropped off the call-her-she's-a-sucker list. I think the word got around that I was either drunk or crazy, but I guess that's worn off because now they all seem to be calling me at night.

4. In your past novels, you dealt quite a bit with family issues-the loss of a father in REPLACING DAD, and in THE QUEEN OF OCTOBER a young woman's adjustment to living with her grandparents. In the same tradition, THE TURNING HOUR encompasses the modern family of stepparents and half-siblings. How do family dynamics play a role in this story? Why is the nature of Bergin's branched family essential to the book? What are you trying to say about family crisis in general?

First of all, I strongly believe that as a writer it is my job to write the stories that are being lived around me in my own time and place. And one of the most prevalent stories in our culture during my lifetime is the changing American family. So I can't help but want to write about this. Also, as a child, my great fantasy was that I wanted to live in a family like June Cleaver's and have Beaver as my brother. Yes, this is definitely loopy! But I'm also very ordinary, so I don't think my fantasy was different from a lot of kids' fantasies.

In fact, we all longed for what television-- which in the 50s began to replace the fireplace as the hearth in the home--taught us. It showed us the ideal, which is good-- it gives us something to shoot for and to model ourselves after. Yet, we never measure up and that creates a longing. And now, with the social upheaval of the 60s, divorce and broken families have become what most of us experience. So when I was raising my own children, the breakup of families was what surrounded my kids in terms of what their friends were going through. In my work, I don't intend to say either that divorce is bad or divorce is good. Every family has its own situations and resolutions. Yet by studying a situation through its opposite, i.e. by looking at the effects of the breakup on the family, we gain insights into what might be the best things about a family staying united-and in particular how important relationships are to children.

In all three of my novels, I am merely looking at what is happening in our culture. I myself have been married for nearly thirty-five years. Fortunately I'm happily married. This has given me the freedom to explore the opposite, for divorce extracts an enormous emotional toll. I wouldn't have had the strength to write about divorce if I had been living it myself. And since the trick to writing is to rewrite that old maxim: write about what you know by saying, write about what you understand emotionally, and since the prevalent emotion in divorce is rejection, I knew plenty about that from being a writer!

THE TURNING HOUR looks at all these issues. So what I am trying to say, or should I say, point out, in looking at these issues once again in this novel is that for teenagers, the breakup of a family is a dangerous thing-- just when they are exploring the world in terms of their desires for their own relationships, when their parents' marriage has ended, they are faced with all these new questions like: can't love ever last? Do I have what it takes to have a relationship?

Why did my father or mother leave-not just each other, but me? Why is my world like this? Why can't anybody get along? Will my whole life be like this?

Scary, isn't it?

I also look at an issue, which I don't think we fully understand in our culture and that's the importance of father-love. Our culture has given the role of provider, or breadwinner to the fathers of our families, and we have completely disregarded the emotional role that fathers play in their children's lives. I don't think fathers are fully appreciated or realize their own importance. In our cultural changes we have diminished their role. In a sense, The Turning Hour is a celebration of father-love. You can't come away from reading the novel, just as I couldn't come away from writing the novel, without a new understanding of the essential part a father plays in the very private, deeply emotional growth of his children. Amen.

5. I understand you researched teen suicide with professionals before writing the book. Whom did you talk with? What did you learn?

--Yes, I knew that I would have to personally chart the territory that my main character, Bergin, would cross in order to have the story be an act of discovery and to hold together organically. So I had to get educated about all sorts of things regarding teenagers who have attempted suicide. I started calling around town asking for recommendations of a renowned adolescent psychologist or psychiatrist who might want to help me with this project, and I was referred to one. It turned out she and I had raised boys together, sharing the driving of carpools, and so on, while she had been getting her Ph.D. So we'd known each other for a long time, though not professionally. It made this process very comfortable.

She walked me through the scenes of the psychiatric hospital stay and gave me guidance in constructing the therapy scenes. She felt the story was so important, and she was so committed to helping me, that-bless-her-heart-she let me call her just anytime-day or night to help me walk myself through a scene. She gave me specifics such as this: that most often on the day a young adult attempts suicide, she or he will see something that becomes a signal-something that seems magical that acts as a message, giving permission.

She also told me that the use of plain-old household aspirin is the method most often young adults choose. Her descriptions of treatment for suicide attempts in a psychiatric setting were not only essential but also startling. Furthermore, my husband, who has been a pediatric neurosurgeon for twenty years, helped me with the purely medical stuff. But as all novelist know, no matter how many people are willing to help you, the fictional journey must be your own, and by necessity, lonely.

6. Bergin is a very genuine, likeable teen. She deals with contemporary issues faced by many high school students including romantic relationships, the balance between school and extracurricular activities and family dynamics. How did all of these factors play a role in Bergin's attempted suicide? What about teen suicide in general?

It's important that I make it clear that I speak as a layperson deeply concerned about our nation's youth. I do not offer what I know from the viewpoint of a professional counselor, or as any other person in what might be called the "helping profession." What I know is what I have learned from other professionals and from those who have helped me in my research. And what this research tells us is that suicide attempts spring from a profound sense of hopelessness. This is most often associated with a feeling of loss. One of the most dangerous times in a teen's life is when he or she has suffered a loss of some kind: the loss of a relationship, (boyfriend or girlfriend, or the trauma of a parents' divorce, or loss of self-esteem through humiliation). And always there is a combination of factors that create the sense of a desperate situation. Frequently a young adult feels that he or she is in a double bind-a situation in which no matter which direction is taken, loss results. This is basically the situation Bergin experiences in The Turning Hour. And yet, if I were to relate the events in her life, which push her to her drastic decision, they would seem inconsequential to you and flat. For to understand the reality she faced, you must enter it with her, day-by-day, event by event. Research tells us this: when a young adult feels that he or she is in a situation that feels so drastic that suicide seems the answer, several factors are at work. These can be: no sense of belonging, lack of support from family and friends, the difficult changes that accompany adolescence, revenge upon someone who has hurt them, an inability to see past their pain to any solution, pregnancy, peer shunning, and abuse. The Psychiatric Association points out that there can also be biological as well as psychological causes. Studies have shown that aggressive and impulsive people who make violent suicide attempts have reduced amounts of serotonin, and a family history of suicide can also be a factor. In The Turning Hour what I knew I had to do was to create a warped reality that seems perfectly logical to Bergin, and thereby perfectly logical to the reader. The interesting thing about suicide is that the first thing we want to know about a victim is why, why did they do it? And yet, no reason seems sufficient because we are standing in a different place; we see the world from a different viewpoint and with different eyes. Simply, until we enter the world of the person who has made the decision to end his life, every reason seems unbelievable. What I wanted to do with The Turning Hour was to not only create the sense of warped reality that would lead to Bergin's suicide attempt, but to also chart her journey into the realization of her resilience. I wanted to follow her step by step by which she comes to know she will never again see at the world as she once had seen it, nor succumb to its former darkness. In some ways, this book is "strength training."

7. THE TURNING HOUR begins with the actual suicide attempt. It then simultaneously works its way backwards into the events leading up to the suicide, and forward through the present, on into the future of Bergin and her family. Thus, the reader is sorting through the events in the same way and time that the characters are. What made you tell the story this way, with this timeline and the alternating mother-daughter narratives?

--First of all, I wanted to use the two voices of mother and daughter because the story came to me by way of a mother, and also my own daughter kept telling me to please keep the voice of the mother in the story because all daughters want to know why their mothers are acting loopy at one time or another! I started with the suicide attempt because I knew I had to let Bergin answer the reader's immediate question of why she did this. I also like the tone that teenagers tend to always use when recounting the past-you see, I myself never grew up, and I think teenagers are some of the funniest creatures on earth. Yes, they can be exasperating and exhausting. But they have this way of looking at the world that imparts a sense of supreme confidence and omniscience while at the same time insecurity and a longing to be loved which is expressed in every sentence and every breath. They are the most vulnerable creatures on earth, and their moods are as changeable as the surface of water. As I've said before, this book came to me as a whole as though I were recording it, and telling it in the way that it came seemed natural. I tend to think of it as a guidebook for despair, for the journey that the reading of fiction can provide should feel much like a "lived" experience. Reading nonfiction provides an opportunity for intellectual growth, but fiction should always offer the opportunity for emotional growth.

8. Leslie, Bergin's mother, didn't see the suicide attempt coming. No one did. How can parents prevent themselves from being put in that position? How can they be aware that their children are having suicidal thoughts? What were the warning signs in the story that Leslie missed?

Dorothy Parker said that the best way to communicate with a teenager is to let the air of his tires. The fact is, adolescence is a time when privacy and secrecy reign. So it is difficult to constantly be in touch with what one's child is doing or feeling. At the time that Bergin attempts suicide, she is not living with her mother; she is with her father; and therefore the day-by-day contact for each parent is different. Because teenagers are pulling away from their parents, it's easy to feel disconnected, and there are always those days when out of exhaustion and frustration, a parent wants to throw up their hands and say, So Be It, and more or less pull the plug on opportunities for communication and connection. Bergin attempts at one time to talk to her mother, to make a request of her. She does it subtly, though, and Leslie did not read the signs of what exactly Bergin asks of her-the words themselves-to know what Bergin is really saying. Generally, there are warning signs which professional counselors and psychiatrists can list. These are the general symptoms of depression: (sleeplessness, low energy, low mood, sadness, appetite loss.) Loss of interest in things which were once valued. A change in personality, school problems, family problems or crisis, a family history of suicides, impulsivity (no fear of consequences), legal problems, substance abuse (a recent study showed that 13% of people who committed suicide did so while abusing alcohol at the time), anger, verbalization of suicidal thoughts, medical problems, guilt, a prior attempt, and the making of what is called "final arrangements"(giving things away, making comments like "I'd be better off dead," or "I won't be a problem for you much longer," or "nothing matters; it's of no use.")

9. Of course, suicide is a very serious subject. Yet unlike many other fiction and non-fiction books on suicide, THE TURNING HOUR offers laugh-out loud reading! How did you balance these two disparate emotions and make them unite?

I can't seem to help seeing the world in funny ways. And as I've already said, I think teenagers are some of the funniest people on the planet; they remind us of our youth, our dreams, our fears, and often, our most authentic selves. In my other novels, I discovered that the comic moments represented hope. I truly believe that our ability to laugh, (which no other creature on this earth has, except the hyena, and I understand he's not laughing because of a joke but more often because of something to do with food-- either that he doesn't have it or is about to become it) is the finger on the pulse of our sanity. Lose it and we're REALLY in trouble.

10. Is it paradoxical for a book about teenage suicide to be hopeful and optimistic?

Definitely no. Counselors and psychiatrists tell me that the greatest myth about suicide is that talking about it will encourage it. In fact, I am told that the opposite is true. Turn on the lights, and the darkness will begin to go away. In fact, counselors tell me that one of the best ways of preventing teen suicide is to take threats of it seriously and to talk about it. For instance, if someone confides in you that they are contemplating suicide, don't shy away from it. Ask how long they have been thinking about this? Never take a suicide threat lightly or ignore it, and never belittle the person who is threatening. In fact, a young person might joke about ending it all, fearing that he or she might burden you with their problems. But we need to take time to listen. And encourage that they receive counseling help. Then bring someone else in on your knowledge-in other words, tell someone close to the person who is having suicidal thoughts. Generally, as long as a person feels that other people are helpful, the feeling is a deterrent to suicide.

11. You refer to suicide as "a taboo subject that has been regarded to be as much fun to talk about as having a root canal": yet you braved the subject regardless of the taboo. How does THE TURNING HOUR transcend the taboo and get to the heart of the matter? What is the real message here?

I was eager to try to define the value of life through looking at it through its opposite: the potential loss of it through sheer intention. On July 28, l999, the Surgeon General, Dr. Satcher, released a Call to Action to Prevent Suicide. He stated that recent statistics show that for every two homicides that take place in the U.S. there are three suicides committed. And suicides and homicides are often related, as was the case in Littleton, Colorado.

He advocates awareness-that we must recognize that suicides are preventable. The hard facts are these: 500,000 teens attempt suicide each year in this country. 5,000 die. Every one and a half hours, a teen is attempting suicide. One school in California reported an average of two suicide attempts per month and has had on occasion three attempts in one day. Suicide rates among African American males ages 10 to 19 have doubled since l980. And suicide rates among gay and lesbian adolescents are 3 times that of heterosexual teens. It is my hope that The Turning Hour will serve as a catalyst for dialogues in schools, in families, in our communities-- such that the lights will be turned on to this dark subject that travels in the underbelly of our culture. One of the greatest threats to our nation's youth is that suicide would come to be seen as an act of honor. Only by looking at it in cold hard reality-the consequences of it, the ugly minute-by-minute results of it-can it be honestly viewed. It is my belief that doing this through fiction is a good way to go.

12. Who should read this book? What do you hope will be the effect your book has on its readers?

This book is appropriate for all young adults, all adults, and for all backgrounds of readers. I have tried to offer a journey through the complicated world of our modern culture and to enter into one young adult's mind as she makes her way through a difficult landscape and period of time. The fact that I chose to make my main character a female stemmed from my knowledge of what I know about growing up female; and therefore, I felt that I could tell the story most honestly from this particular angle. The issues Bergin faces, though, are pertinent to all people, I think, in all walks of life and from all viewpoints, for what she is fighting is her own sense of devaluation, the fear that she is disappearing and that the beliefs she once placed all her hope and faith in were only illusions all along. Everything she has ever believed seems to no longer be there. Hanging out in undefined space like this is terrifying, yet it's part of the human journey. And to live with Bergin as she rediscovers and redefines her life is, hopefully, an opportunity to gain insights into one's own resilience. To Be Or Not To Be is part of the natural fabric of adolescence. Up until today, wrestling with this question has been a personal journey conducted in the dark. It is my hope that my novel, The Turning Hour, will help to walk this issue into the light.
© Copyright 2012 by Shelley Fraser Mickle. Reprinted with permission by River City Press. All rights reserved.

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